Daily Search Forum Recap: November 19, 2008

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Webmaster Tools for iPhone
A Google Groups thread asks if Google has made Google Webmaster Tools iPhone friendly? In other words, did Google make a version of Google Webmaster Tools optimized to render well on an iPhone? The answer is, kind of - yes. You can go to Google Webmaster Tools, click on Tools and then Gadgets and add the iGoogle gadgets to your iGoogle front page. Once you add that, those reports should be available in an iPhone

Google Gives Us Search Based Keyword Tool & Updates Keyword Data in Other Tools
Google has launched a new tool called the Search-Based Keyword Tool which lets you know which keywords your customers are searching for and which you should advertise with based on your site's content. From an interview with Barry and Google at Search Engine Land, the goal of this tool is to "give advertisers a look at keywords that they are currently not advertising for that might bring in a positive ROI." A screenshot of the

Google Image Search Now Shares LIFE Photo Archive
This is pretty awesome stuff for history photo enthusiasts. Google has shared great information that it is now hosting a never-seen-before LIFE photo archive. The LIFE photo archive photographs date back to the 1750s! Stunning? Absolutely. And fascinating, too. One forum member even questions whether some of the photographs themselves are legit: "does a full frontal of a 1-2 year old boy qualify as kiddie pic? Is it legal to publish that online?" I suppose

Google Ads Now In Images, YouTube, Finance & News
In the Official Google Blog, Nick Fox points out that Google is rolling out "ads in new places." These locations include: Image ads in Google Image Search (SERoundtable coverage and a foreshadowing post) Sponsored videos on YouTube (SERoundtable coverage) Text ads on Google Finance, which was rolled out on Monday. Search Engine Watch Forums member abbottsys calls this a "financially smart" move, saying: If you do a stock quote on a company the AdWords ads

Do You Need Video Content to Compete in Google Today?
There are only so many results on a search page. You do a search at Google, you typically get about ten results. Those results are either web pages, videos, news results, blog posts, images and so on. Video results seem to be the most growing result vertical on the page. That being said, the question coming up at WebmasterWorld is, do we need videos to compete in the future of Google's search results? Excellent question.

AdWords URL Longer Than 35 Characters Need Exception
We discussed the Google AdWords policy on a max URL character space of 35 in the past. They recently started enforcing this rule back in June of this year. A new Google Groups thread has an issue where on advertiser needs to have a display URL that is longer than 35 characters. So what can he/she do? AdWordsPro Sarah says that you can submit an exception. In short, make your display URL 35 characters, and